AI: What is a low-threat way to introduce teams to the concept of using negative judgment for a positive purpose to improve on a creative solution?

David Kord Murray: If people understand the 6 steps [to business innovation by building on the ideas of others, outlined in Borrowing Brilliance], then they become aware that judgment is good because it’s a tool you can use to make an idea better.  They understand the entire process, and they see the results.

In a team you can soften the blow of a negative judgment by saying, “let me play devil’s advocate with you…here’s what I don’t like about what you’re telling me…”

Of course, it’s also important to identify why you like an idea.  Reinforce why it’s worth improving.

When the IPhone first came out…Steve Jobs said, “it’s way too big, but I do like integrating ITunes.”  That’s why he was such a brilliant innovator, and became known so widely even beyond the software industry.  He was manic – up one moment and down the next.  Being that way naturally he would LOVE ideas one moment and the next day he would HATE it and rant on it.  He employed different points of view to evaluate the same subject.  Call it switching hats, if you will.  Edward DiBona describes a similar kind of process in his book Six Thinking Hats – two of the hats are positive and negative judgment.  You have to play both good cop and bad cop toward the idea you’re working with.

To take an example from my consulting work…I’m working with a company inRidgefield,CT.  It is facing some real problems, the whole industry is, and the company needs to develop more creative processes.  One of the problems is a passive/aggressive management that says “do this, don’t do that.”   In an atmosphere where ideas are either accepted or rejected whole cloth, the unspoken message is “don’t debate, don’t study the pros and cons.”   And the employees are taking it personally.

We are putting a program together to teach management that it has a core responsibility to keep ideas flowing.  To move ideas and features around and check incremental progress as you restructure takes a long time.  They can respond to an idea by speaking to both sides, the positive and the negative, and then send the employees back to the drawing board.  That’s how you’re going to get the kind of improvements that lead to true innovation happening.

AI: What are some striking examples of successful recombining at the corporate level? 

David Kord Murray :My latest book,Plan B (recently published by Simon & Schuster)  has to do with business models – strategy and tactics based on creative thinking tools and the process of recombination.  The overarching story is Facebook and how Mark Zuckerburg took different pieces of things that were already out there – instant messaging, the social media and community building happening on Myspace – he was brilliant at coming up with combinations of things.  Taking his company along for that journey and going through the evolutionary process, they got really good at it.

The businesses that succeed at this are constantly trying new things, always searching for next idea.   They don’t sit on their laurels.  If you do, you’re going to be copied by the next generation of innovators.  If you stay constantly innovating then the competitors can’t catch up, because you’re always ahead of the curve.

I was working with a health care company that was having problems in their ICU.  Employing the six steps to business innovation from Borrowing Brilliance, we defined the problem as one of coordinating the timing on an awful lot of moving parts that had to be working in close synchronization and precision, then we asked the important question: who has similar problems?

One of the answers that came up, believe it or not, was NASCAR.  So we brought in a NASCAR pitboss.  He explained his working process, and the health care company got a lot of ideas.  They had to work with them and tweak and make adjustments, but it’s all part of the process.  That’s how innovation works.

Part of my consulting is to teach teams how to do that.  Kaiser Permanente, GE, Paypal.  Sometimes it’s harder in the bigger companies, but it’s doable.

David Kord Murray graciously took time to speak with Arts Interstices about his work. The interview was published in a sequence of five blogposts in March-April 2012.